23. Sabrina
23
SAbrINA
T he beach cleanup event wound down before I could feel fried out here under the sunshine. It went off without a hitch, as they usually did. This wasn’t my event. I hadn’t coordinated it. A local gardeners’ group put this cleanup on every quarter, and I was a regular volunteer. They were so familiar with me that they’d deemed me a supervisor.
When I spotted Nick on his bike nearby, I wondered if he would cause issues being here. After running away from him at that party, I fell back into the big question-mark territory of not knowing how to handle him. Or how to handle this forbidden attraction that wouldn’t fade for him.
He’d kept his distance, though, just standing there and looking. I liked that he’d come, almost as if he had to see me to stay sane. I felt like that too, but as I realized my bully had become one of the most important people in my life, I shook my head at the strangeness of it all.
He was my bully, yet now I enjoyed the notion of his looking out for me and watching over me.
Crazier things have happened.
Riding the high of doing good and helping the environment, I smiled as I patiently helped the gardeners gather up the last of their things.
“Thanks, Sabrina,” the coordinator said once we put the last bag of plastic recyclables near the road where they’d be picked up. “Again.” She laughed. “You’re our favorite volunteer.”
I grinned, not at her praise but at the happiness that came with doing something good. “Thanks for letting me help!”
It didn’t hurt that I was around like-minded, altruistic souls all morning. And it was a huge benefit to get a few more signatures for my pool fundraiser. It seemed like I would never stop finding genuine support if I took the risk to go out and look or ask for it.
Before I walked back to the car, which now had a repaired tire, I glanced again at a woman who’d shown up near the end.
Something about her seemed vaguely familiar, like I’d seen her before. I couldn’t place a name to her face. But it was the sadness she showed so clearly that made me keep glancing back at her.
Maybe she’s lonely?
Mom and Dad always warned me not to let my big heart rule me all the time, but I couldn’t shut off my empathetic nature.
Deciding she might be someone who could use a friend, I approached with a small smile. “Hi.”
She looked back at me, almost startled, as if I’d snapped her out of a deep trance.
“I couldn’t help but notice you standing over here for quite a while,” I said gently. “Are you all right?”
It wasn’t a crime to stand on a public beach. She was probably just enjoying the sunshine and some peace and quiet in nature. But if she wasn’t, and she needed a friend… I’d reach out every time a stranger needed help.
“I want to be all right.”
Uh-oh.
As I stepped up closer, her hair blew back in the breeze. That was all it took for me to recognize her. She was at the party when I was catering.
Mrs. Lorsen. Her long, black hair had blown back when she walked past a fan at the conservatory, and I recalled how the raven locks flew from her face then.
She stood with George Lorsen all night, and it was obvious she had to be his wife.
She’s Nick’s mom.
But no mutual recognition showed on her face. I didn’t expect her to realize that I had been at that fundraiser. I was only there as a member of the catering staff, and no guests ever paid attention to us. As employees there to serve the rich, we blended into the background. When Tiffany tripped me and I cut my hand, I was so nervous that guests would pay attention to me, but the only one who had was Nick.
As if realizing the seriousness of her words, she smirked as she acknowledged me standing next to her. “Don’t worry. I’m not suicidal or anything. Not this time.”
Oh, no. I couldn’t help but glance at the high pier nearby, the one with multiple signs posted to urge people not to consider suicide with its height over the water. “But, um. You have before?”
She nodded, apparently unafraid to talk to a stranger about such a thing. “Years ago.”
“I’m sorry.”
She sighed heavily. “Me too. For so, so many things.” With a glance, she seemed to consider me, perhaps weighing whether she’d elaborate. “Have you ever been in love?”
I blinked, taken aback by her blunt question out of the blue. I supposed my asking her if she’d ever been suicidal was just as uncensored of a question as hers was.
“I…” I cleared my throat, finding a thrilling sense of freedom to speak the truth I was learning with this stranger. She wasn’t a stranger to me. I knew who she was. She was the mother of the man I was falling for. “I think I am.”
“You think?” A smile almost changed her face.
I nodded. “For the first time.” I shrugged. “I mean, how am I supposed to really know how to define it?”
“You’ll know. You’ll know because you will think about that person and be certain you can’t imagine your life without them.”
Okay, then… check. I nodded. “That sounds about right.”
“You see that bench over there?” She pointed at one near the pier. Being seated there would give a wonderful view of the sunset.
“Yeah.”
“That’s where my first love proposed to me. Many, many years ago.” She exhaled a long breath again, sagging her shoulders. Hugging herself, she stared at the bench. “My first and last love.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“Me too,” she admitted. “I’m so sorry that David had to suffer. So sorry that fate had to screw him over in the end.” She gave me another glance, as if checking I was still here and she wasn’t talking to herself so depressed and sad like this. “He fought cancer for years. Years and years. Two months after they declared him in remission and cancer-free—for good, they said—some teenager had to text and drive and crash into him.”
“Oh, I’m so sorry for your loss… ma’am.” I fought the urge to hug her.
“It was so cruel to lose him after fighting death for so long. And in all that time, I kept thinking that he had to make it. He had to survive because I couldn’t imagine my life without him.”
“It must be hard.”
She nodded. “It is. It really is. I’ve been trying to cope and move on. I’ve been trying to let love or happiness into my life again, but that feels like giving up and throwing away the love I had for David.”
“You will always love him,” I said, not knowing how and where I found the courage to act like I knew anything about this. “And that’s not a crime.”
“Yes. But it’s holding me back. I remarried so my son and I wouldn’t be on the streets. All those treatments, and the parents of that teenager who crashed into him had the gall to sue us . Fortunately, David’s old college friend stood with us. If it wasn’t for George’s legal assistance, I never would’ve been able to win that case.”
I was relieved that Lorsen & Spengler could take on “good” cases and fight the good fight too.
“George knew how dire our finances were, though, and while my son and I never had to go without, we would have. I quit my job ten years ago to help David through his treatments, and with how so much has changed with technology and the workforce, I never would’ve been able to go back to my former career.” Once more, she looked at me, as if needing to see that someone was listening, and perhaps, that I wasn’t judging. “So, when he offered to marry me, I agreed. I wanted to move on. I never loved George, but I wanted to believe that even friends could have a form of a loving bond.”
“That makes sense.”
She arched her brows. “You think so?”
“Love isn’t cut and dry. The love you have for a parent will be different from the love you have for a friend. The love you have for a significant other will be different from the love you have for your neighbor. But all forms of love can matter.”
“That’s what I thought.”
I frowned. “But you don’t anymore?”
“No. I can’t.” She lowered her gaze, as if she couldn’t bear to keep that bench in view. “I married George knowing we’d be friends. But I started to wonder if anything else could grow between us. We’d known each other forever. We both cared about David. But just as soon as I started thinking that I might want to open up to him more, or open up to something beyond grief, I realized he wouldn’t reciprocate. How could he when he’s cheating on me already?”
Whoa. I wasn’t counting on that bombshell. Professor Lorsen was cheating on his wife?
“Maybe it’s wrong of me to expect him to be faithful to me when we never were intimate at all.”
“No, that’s not fair,” I protested. “I’d… I’d feel the same.” I had no experience to speak of, but this connection with Nick was opening my eyes. It took guts to love someone, and it required a risk to allow someone close enough to break your heart. It sounded like this widow had miscalculated on her leap of faith, and that angered me on her behalf.
“At first, I wanted to think that. And I kept wondering if he was just being patient with me. But then I started seeing signs of him cheating… He’s got all those nanny cams all over the house, and I happened to see…” She sighed. “I won’t—can’t—go into details. That’s inappropriate. Nor do I want to bog down a stranger like you…” She peered at me closer, studying me so intensely that I wondered if she remembered me, after all. She hadn’t been present at the meeting at her home, but maybe she saw me in passing.
“No. You’re not bogging me down or anything like that.”
Another heavy sigh left her lips. “I feel bogged down myself. I’ve always tried to keep the beast of depression under control. It’s a constant worry. And then I worry about my son, too.” She lifted her hand to rub her brow. “He’s so mad, angry that he lost his dad, bitter and sad about the loss.”
Hearing her tell me something so personal about Nick felt wrong, like I was going behind his back. But I wasn’t. And it wasn’t so hard to know this had to be true. Nick was that dark. He did carry a lot of resentment. I would know. He’d projected it onto me.
“He’s so mad at the world about losing his father. All I’ve wanted to do since we lost David was do right by Nick. I’m so broken inside that I feel hopeless, but especially with him, I feel like I’m failing.”
“No, that can’t be true,” I said.
“I just want him to have a home, and others besides me to lean on.” She shook her head, sniffling. “I’m sorry. I don’t know why I thought it was a good idea to unload all of this on you.” She laughed once, incredulously, as if she couldn’t believe she had. “A stranger. And here I am acting like you’re a shrink or something. My God. I’m so sorry.”
“No.” I reached my hand out and held it up. “No. It’s okay?—”
“I’m sorry to burden you with all this and…” She backed up a step, shaking her head as shame covered her face.
“It is okay,” I argued.
Shaking her head faster, she turned and fled the beach. Sure, it was kind of strange for her to unload all of that like she had, but maybe venting to a stranger was what she’d needed and didn’t know it. Mom and Dad, Elise, too, they all said that I was a good listener and that I just prompted people to open up. Perhaps that was what happened with her.
As she ran off, I felt terrible that she was this distraught and so wrecked about it. I had no experience with a loss that they’ve dealt with—her losing her husband and Nick losing his father. But I felt for them. And now that I had more background information, I understood more about why Nick might be behaving the way he was.
Elise told me that he had switched from engineering to art, and his grades had fallen quite a bit. That suggested a dramatic change in his goals. And more recently, he was a jerk to me, bullying me before giving in to intimacy with me.
He’s just acting out in anger because he’s hurting inside.
I didn’t want to make excuses for him, but it rang true. I believed that bullies, or anyone who was being mean, acted like that because they were wounded and insecure inside.
And he’d gotten close enough to matter already. It pained me to think of his hurting like this. I didn’t like the idea of his reacting in anger because he was stuck in grief and sadness.
Instead of going home, I drove toward campus. I couldn’t seek him out at his home, the Lorsen mansion. If I went there to find him, I could run into his mother again and she’d realize I wasn’t such a stranger to her family, after all. Or I could encounter Tiffany, and I wasn’t in the mood for her meanness. Or I could see Professor Lorsen himself, and I wasn’t sure what to think about him now knowing he was a cheater.
I headed toward the closest parking lot to the art buildings and found a spot there. I’d sent that ice pack to the art studio that he was listed as using on the art department website. Maybe he’d be there. Or maybe I could wait for him there. It felt like a reach, but I couldn’t hold back on this need to… well, to see him. It was just like his seeking me out and watching me at the beach cleanup.
At the door to his studio, I knocked and waited for a reply. Music drifted from inside, but no one answered my knocks.
Is he even here?
I was tense and on edge, nervous to be taking the initiative like this to pursue him, for a change.
I knocked louder.
No one answered, but when I touched the doorknob, I was surprised and relieved that it was open and unlocked.
Just go. Don’t chicken out now.
I hesitated, though, because this was a huge step in a different direction. I was going after him. And I had to. Because more of my heart cracked and crumbled when I thought of his hurting and feeling so mad at the world.
My bleeding heart couldn’t stand it. And my growing feelings for him kept me wishing I could be a source of security and comfort like he had been for me.
Mind made up, I turned the knob and pushed the door in. With this slight entrance to the art studio, I was immediately accosted with the strong scent of paint and the low chords of alternative rock playing somewhere inside.
Stepping inside fully, I kept my hand on the door to close it fully.
He was here, all right, clearly not hearing the knock with the music playing. It suited him, too, a low, slow song about loss.
With that strange magnetism that was at play whenever we were near, he looked up. He felt my focus on him, just like I could tell when he was watching me. Spying and lurking. Stalking, even.
His brow furrowed as he paused lifting a paintbrush to a canvas. His jeans were splattered. The white T-shirt was smudged with grays and blues. But it was the torment in his eyes that caught and held my attention the most.
The pain was still there beneath the surprise.
He would be surprised that I was here.
This was the first time I was making a move to be near him.
Without giving him a chance to wonder why I’d shown up, I ran across the studio space, so glad that I’d found him alone here. Before I reached him, he dropped the paintbrush, freeing his hands to catch me as I launched at him. Hugging him fiercely, I wished I could infuse him with something good. Anything that could lend him comfort to counter the sadness and pain.
“Sabrina?” He didn’t step back, returning the embrace with his muscled arms locking tightly around me.
I couldn’t reply. I didn’t know what to say. I hadn’t rehearsed anything, and I wasn’t sure how I could ever plan to explain to him that his mom was unloading her heartache to me, assuming I was a stranger.
Instead, I reached up and kissed him, pouring out all the affection that I couldn’t put into words.